Friday reading, Gay’s the Word, London, 7pm

As you know, I’m in London promoting GASPP: a Gay Anthology of Singapore Poetry and Prose (in addition to some of my own work.) As part of the tour, I’m doing a reading at the UK’s only GLBT interest bookstore.

If you’re in London, please come! There’ll be wine and Chinese New Year goodies. 

Friday, 4 February, 7-8pm
Gay’s the Word
66 Marchmont Street
(Russell Square Tube), London WC1N 1AB
020 7278 7654

Facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=172960122748942

By the way, the event’s been set up by Clara Yee, part of the amazing informal cultural promotion group Creative SINergy. Thanks so much, guys.

GASPP in London!

Gay’s the Word, London’s main GLBT bookstore, has also agreed to carry our book. 😀

Also, some of us writers will be appearing at these two events. Possibly a third, if we get our act together.

Count on Queers, Singapore!

Friday, 28 January 2011, 5:30-7pm
Room 104 (Senate House, First Floor), Institute of Commonwealth Studies
School of Advanced Study, University of London

Part of a public seminar series on Singapore Politics at the University of London. Queer Singaporean writers Ng How Wee and myself will be chairing the first part of the event, followed by a talk by Dr Simon Obendorf (University of Lincoln) on queer politics in Singapore.

writLOUD
Monday, 7 February 2011, 6.30pm onwards.
RADA Foyer Bar, Malet Street, London WC1E 7JN.

Birkbeck’s monthly readings event, organised in partnership with Oxfam. I’ll be one of the featured readers.

Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=174827652553310
writLOUD official page: http://www.writershub.co.uk/writloud.php

Some photos from “Making It New”

Unfortunately, I don’t any shots of the bookstore launch on me: bear with me, they’ll be up soon. But in the meantime, here’s some images of some of our authors at the National Library:

From left to right: Moderator Nicholas Liu, Teng Qian Xi (translator), Zhuang Yusa (featured poet), Grace Chua (featured poet) and Koh Xintian.

Look how legitimate their audience is!

And here are us older poets, hawking books at the back of the room: Ng Yi-Sheng (myself), Enoch Ng, Yeow Kai Chai and Yong Shu Hoong. We sold a decent number of GASPPs.

Typo in “People of the Seventh Month” by Mint Hong

Felt I should inform everyone of a pretty big editing mistake we made. We forgot to include the following three sentences (here presented in italics) in the original Mandarin version of Hong Simin’s “People of the Seventh Month”, aka < <七月人>>:

“晚安，明天见。”阿珍和丽丽下车后，向阿伟挥手。车子很快得驶出了她们的视线范围。

“我觉得阿伟喜欢你。” 丽丽淡淡地说。

“有一点吧。”阿珍叹了口气说。丽丽没作声。“谁喜欢我不重要，重要的是我喜欢谁。” 阿珍边说边搭着丽丽的肩膀走向电梯。

“你啊，你啊，跑歌台后特别会说话！” 两人的笑声顿时划破了组屋底层的宁静。

“又过了一天。”阿珍伸了伸懒腰说。“一天一天过，钱就一天一天多，欧洲我们已经去了，小姐还想去哪里啊，去非洲喂狮子好吗？”四目交接的那一刻，她们又笑了。

Bookstore Launch of GASPP, Sunday 21 Nov, 3pm

Since a lot of folks couldn’t make our last launch at Play, we’re having an additional launch in an actual bookstore space.

Sun 21 Nov
BOOKSTORE LAUNCH OF GASPP
3-4pm, Birds & Co, Orchard Cineleisure #03-05A

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=159379880764684

If you haven’t heard of Birds & Co, it’s ‘cos it’s BooksActually’s new outlet in the shopping centre district of Singapore. Ours will be the first book event to be held there! We’re expecting to feature readings with Ovidia Yu, X’Ho, Lee Yew Leong and Cyril Wong.

(This post is being bumped up from Nov 3.)

Two events involving our poets

I’m putting the names of contributors to GASPP in bold

1. Firstfruits Launch 2010: Layang-Layang

Firstfruits Publications is proud to present its biggest book launch to date. The nine titles to be launched are:

– The Stamp Collector’s Wife by Grace Chua
– They hear salt crystallising by Teng Qian Xi [our translator for one piece]
– oneiros by Cyril Wong
– Life~Science by Eleanor Wong
– 86 Benevolent Street by Mika G. Yamaji
– From within the Marrow by Yong Shu Hoong
– Layang-Layang, a new literary journal
– Zhong Tu Bao Tai (Burst Tyre) by Chui Wei-Li
– Jian Qiao Shi Xue (Cambridge Poetics) by Tan Chee Lay

Note: There will also be a signing session by the authors after the readings. For more information about the event, please email events@firstfruitspublications.com

Date: Saturday, November 6
Time: 7.30pm-10.30pm
Venue: The Salon, National Museum of Singapore, 93 Stamford Road
Admission: Free

2. Making It New: Four Young Poets on the State of the Art
@ Imagination Room, L5, NLB, 13 Nov 10, 1.00pm

What does it mean to create “Singapore literature” in the 21st century? How do local poets taking up the art today locate themselves in relation to their predecessors and to the larger world? Join four young poets – Grace Chua, Koh Xin Tian, Teng Qian Xi and Zhuang Yusa – as they tackle these and other vital questions while relating their thoughts to their own poetic practice. The event, facilitated by Nicholas Liu, will include readings of poems by each of the writers, a panel discussion and a Q&A session. This session is presented in collaboration between NBDCS and NLB.
Admission is FREE. As places are limited, please register at http://golibrary.nlb.gov.sg

Trevvy has given us coverage!

… sorta. Check out this very weird photo of me (and the book) over here.

By the way, stay tuned for news about our second launch, in an honest-to-goodness *bookstore*…

Launch @ Play Club!

The place was packed, and we sold about 100 books! We also got (slightly) advance publicity from Fridae.com.

Here’s a bunch of photos from TLC co-founder Alvin Pang:

More info soon!

GASPP is on the shelves!

You can buy it at BooksActually, 86 Club Street, as well as online at this link:

http://www.ethosbooks.com.sg/store/mli_viewItem.asp?idProduct=258

Select Books has already placed their orders, Kinokuniya is dithering, and Borders is being difficult because their purchaser is in Australia. Not to worry: I fully expect it to be in all major bookstores soon, which means we’ll get to do events there.

And it’s already on shelves in KL – I’m going to find out where very soon.

GASPP in KL!!!

Here’s us at the Queer As Books event at 2pm, Sunday 17 Oct in the Annexe!

Remember, this was a joint launch (for us, technically a pre-launch event) of three books.  So from left to right: Matahari Books publisher Amir Muhammad, Diana Dirani and Azwan Ismail, co-editors of the Malaysian Malay language queer anthology Orang Macam Kita; Alfian Sa’at, playwright of the Asian Boys Trilogy; and myself, Ng Yi-Sheng, co-editor of GASPP.

(The photographer is our own publisher, Fong Hoe Fang of The Literary Centre/Ethos Books.)

And here’s GASPP itself!

We had a promotion going on: for every copy of GASPP or  Collected Plays Two: The Asian Boys Trilogy we sold, you got a free copy of Charlene Rajendran’s Taxi Tales.  (No, she’s not gay herself.  But she’s supportive!)

The launch was actually a private event, hence the low levels of publicity.  Folks were afraid of attracting undue attention to Orang Macam Kita, a real danger since the queer Malaysian English language anthology, Body2Body, recently got pulled from the shelves after a complaint.

But still, we had readings from the contirbutors, such as Nizam Zakaria (wish my Bahasa Melayu was good enough to follow what was going on) before I goaded Alfian to go up and read something from our own book: Irfan Kasban’s short prose work Dua Lelaki.

Yes, that is an expression of consternation on Alf’s face. Dua Lelaki is kinda provocative.

Here’s a shot of me reading from my short story Lee Low Tar, gleaned from the Facebook album of Dib Jual Kata. Yeah, we sure established ourselves as unsavoury types.

Adrianna Tan was originally supposed to come too, but she had to cancel suddenly for health reasons, so the event really ended up being quite a sausagefest.  Hopefully this won’t be the case for our Singapore launch!

This last shot’s by Malaysian artist Jun Kit.  At one point during the Q&A, I got asked whether we’d be able to sell the book openly on the shelves in Singapore.  And I had to admit, well, actually, things are much easier for us in Singapore than in KL.  Yes, we complain about censorship, but that hardly ever happens to books (only when important government figures get directly insulted) and what happens to plays is R-ratings and funding cuts and text changes: the whole production does not get shut down.

When we compare ourselves to London or New York or Stockholm, our freedom of speech record is lousy.  But we’re in a better situation than Malaysia, and we should remember that.

Plus, we should buy their books.  Orang Macam Kita can be bought from Matahari Books by mail or from Amazon.  Alfian’s book should be available in all major Singapore bookstores, and if it’s not, demand it.

And as for us, we’re coming soon… 🙂